I've thinking about this since the original post. The reason that shields cost fuel is so you can't simply have them up at all times. It creates more of a "battle stations" type situation where you decide to raise shields and adds a definite limit to the time you can sit there with shields active. Also, because of the recharge time a ship with shields down can't simply sit near a jump point and raise shields when an intruder appears because it requires several minutes to get shields active. It needs to pay the penalty of fuel use to keep its shields up

The more I think about the capacitor idea, the more it realise that it would change things back to the previous situation where a ship could sit near a jump point without shields or their associated cost and them simply raise them to full when required. For that ability, the ship would have to pay a fairly significant penalty.

Steve

Shield Capacitors.

These would store a charge to power up 1 shield generator in 5 seconds. They recharge at 1/2 the normal shield rate.

Tech lines -
Storage Capacity: Affects the number of shields powered.
Shield Recharge Rate: Affects the capacitor's recharge.

Possibly allow them to be armored also.

Very interesting idea. Allows you to get your shields up quickly in an emergency with the disadvantage that they will take up internal space. In addition, I don't think they would be allowed to charge while the shields were active or they could effectively be used as additional shields. Perhaps they way they would work would be that any capacitor energy was transferred straight into the shields when the shields were activated and the capacitors would automatically start recharging once the shields were deactivated. How does that sound?

Steve